Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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The miscellaneous section of the village pump is used to post messages that do not fit into any other category. Please post on the policy, technical, or proposals sections when appropriate, or at the help desk for assistance. For general knowledge questions, please use the reference desk.

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Fake Wikipedia article in the "real world"

What are the rules on something like this?— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:58, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: ? what's the question? DemonDays64 (talk) 21:07, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: This is probably the relevant policy: [1] It says "You may use the marks in satire or jokes. To avoid confusing users that your work is affiliated with the Wikimedia sites, it may be helpful to mark your work as "satire" or "parody." If you're concerned, you can file a report there. RudolfRed (talk) 22:10, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Are you asking for the opinions of individuals who are not lawyers specializing in intellectual property law? In that case I doubt whether the WMF would win a lawsuit against this cartoonist, as it doesn't look enough like a wikipedia page. Geo Swan (talk) 20:06, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Navboxes for US prez & vice prez candidates' spouses, now?

Do we really need navboxes of US presidential & vice presidential candidate's spouses? See example at Eunice Kennedy Shriver article. GoodDay (talk) 22:33, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

GoodDay, do you mean succession boxes? Navboxes are a different kind of navigational template. —⁠andrybak (talk) 18:16, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Errr yeah. The succession boxes. GoodDay (talk) 18:55, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Hello

Please note that actor Faraaz Khan died on 4 november. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.185.175.84 (talk) 12:22, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Faraaz_Khan has his date of birth. RudolfRed (talk) 16:26, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Moving an essay from article space to WP space

Earlier today I noticed Rodw had to fix a link in an automotive article talking about a car's pumper. The link bumper goes to a low traffic essay about running into other editors in real life. To actually find an article on bumpers like those on a car you need to search for bumper (car) (not to be confused with bumper car. There is no disambiguation page for various bumper related topics. How do we move an essay from the name space to WP:space? I would like to set up a disambiguation page for Bumper unless there is an obvious primary topic. Thanks! Springee (talk) 17:24, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

@Springee: Unless I'm missing something, Bumper is already a disambiguation page and the link Rodw fixed was to that disambigutation page. I'm not sure where the page about bumping into other editors is. Sam Walton (talk) 17:35, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

You can only get to the essay by prefixing the title with WP:. Without that prefix, Bumper is an extensive dab page. Schazjmd (talk) 17:46, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

That's weird. Looks like user error but I have no idea how I ended up in an essay by accident. I was curious why Rodw changed the link so I clicked on the old bumper link. Perhaps I accidentally double clicked. Either way, looks like there isn't a problem here. Thanks for the replies! Springee (talk) 18:16, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

I thought, when I saw the ping, I had chosen a wrong link for the dab, but now see you found an essay by User:Fluffernutter. I'm not sure why an individual users essay (even if employed by WMF) should have the shortcuts WP:BUMPER and WP:BUMP.— Rod ^talk 18:25, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

I can't remember if I originally made those redirects or if someone else did, but I have zero objection to them being put to better use. I have a vague sense that their existence might have pre-dated the norm (or maybe just my awareness of the norm?) that we don't do cross-namespace redirects to essays. At any rate, their existence definitely has nothing to do with my employment with the WMF, and that essay was written before I worked here. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 21:10, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Wiki of functions naming contest - Round 2

Hello. Reminder: Please help to choose the name for the new Wikimedia wiki project - the library of functions. The finalist vote starts today. The finalists for the name are: Wikicode, Wikicodex, Wikifunctions, Wikifusion, Wikilambda, Wikimedia Functions. If you would like to participate, then please learn more and vote now at Meta-wiki. Thank you! --Quiddity (WMF)

22:10, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

• Suggest: Wikiwedidntwantorneed Blueboar (talk) 01:27, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Articles that should be renamed

• Lietava, Slovakia → Lietava
• Milići, Republika Srpska → Milići, Bosnia and Herzegovina

SrpskiAnonimac (talk) 16:43, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Please, see Wikipedia:Requested_moves. Ruslik_Zero 18:51, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Ruslik0, I do not know English --SrpskiAnonimac (talk) 22:37, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Redirects from project space to user space?

A couple of years back, I wrote User:RoySmith/Three best sources. After getting tired of typing that every time, I created WP:THREE as a redirect, which (to my pleasurable surprise) became quite popular. This morning, Geo Swan raised some reasonable concerns on my talk page about the appropriateness of this redirect. I feel that userspace is basically an extension of project space, so I don't see this being as much cross-namespace as, say, a redirect from mainspace to userspace. Certainly, if you make a broad division of namespaces into "stuff we present to the public as part of the encyclopedia" vs "stuff we need to run the project", both are clearly in the latter group. On the other hand, I can see the concerns about WP:OWNERSHIP.

I don't want to turn this into a formal RFC, but I am interested in what other people think about the general concept of redirects from WP to userspace. And, more particularly, whether what I've done with WP:THREE is legitimate. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:05, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

• We've always had them, and I've never even thought about them being a problem. WP:RAUL is 15 years old. Cross-namespace redirect are not a problem, and you don't own your userspace, so there is no real issue here. —Kusma (t·c) 16:53, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
• Generally, these redirects are uncontentious. Sometimes, there is contention, for which the correct remedy is WP:RFD. I do agree with what Geo Swan has pointed out on your talk page, and that it is possible someone will come along and assume that your page is a Wikipedia-space essay when it is not, because Wikipedia- and user-space essays do have different retention requirements. --Izno (talk) 19:13, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

edit conflict

• Kusma Category:Wikipedia essays says "Essays in the Wikipedia namespace may be edited by anyone. Essays in the User namespace are normally edited only by the user that hosts the page and are categorized with Category:User essays"

It is one of the places that makes clear there are important distinction between essays in userspace and essays in the wikipedia namespace.

I think Wikipedia:Wikipedia essays also makes clear there are important distinctions between essays in userspace and essays in the wikipedia namespace. It says:

1. "Essays placed in User namespace (i.e., user essays) are often – though not always – meant to represent the viewpoint of one user only. The author of a personal essay located in his or her user space has the right to revert any changes made to it by any other user."
2. "The Wikipedia community has historically tolerated a wide range of subjects and viewpoints on essay pages. However, there are a handful of "essay" pages that tend to get deleted or transferred to user space."
3. and, in a list of material generally not tolerated... "Writings that contradict or subvert policy (or other pages with established consensus), especially if they are intended to undermine, not just disagree with, those pages. Such oppositional views are, however, generally tolerated within user essays."

Wikipedia:Essays#User_essays says

""Essays that the author does not want others to edit, or that are found to contradict widespread consensus, belong in the user namespace..." and "...Writings that contradict policy are somewhat tolerated within the User namespace. The author of a personal essay located in his or her user space has the prerogative to revert any changes made to it by any other user, within reason."

• I think the preceding passages strongly suggest we should maintain a distinction between user essays and the more widely accepted essays in the wikipedia namespace.

You may never have gotten a challenge over using user essays in ways that make them look they are essays in the wikipedia namespace. But I have.

I used to link to my essays with a pipe, so [[User:Geo Swan/opinions/Pick one|Pick one]] would render as Pick one. Years ago, when I got some pushback from contributors who voiced concerns that I was implying my user essays were in the wikipedia space, I started to always state the essay I was linking to was a user essay.

• My question to anyone who has been using a cross namespace redirect for their user essay -- would you consider taking whatever risks are involved in moving your whole essay to the wikipedia namespace? Geo Swan (talk) 19:38, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

I too followed a flawed practice, for a long time, without being challenged.

Kusma I too followed a flawed practice, for a long time, without being challenged.

In 2006 I started four quasi-templates - entries in the template namespace that I started using in a series of closely related articles, that rendered an image, its caption, and a paragraph or two, that I wanted rendered in all those articles. Keeping one instance had the advantage that if I wanted to update the caption, it got updated everywhere I used that quasi template.

It had a bunch of disadvantages I was oblivious to.

I can't remember how long I followed this practice, before it was challenged. I thought the MfD was going to close as no consensus. Several people who weighed in saw nothing wrong with this practice. Those who challenged it advanced weak arguments.

I questioned the closing administrator for a closure justification no one had mentioned during the discussion. They were quite patient in their further explanation. I didn't accept their arguments, right away. I think I may even have considered DRV. But, I spent some time thinking about it. And, a few hours later, or a day later, I'd come around. I decided they were 100 percent correct. I excised the instances where I was misusing transclusion with the other quasi-templates, and requested speedy deletion of them.

The wikipedia's policies are complicated. They can be ambiguous, contradictory, and are in a constant state of flux. Even our most experienced contributors may have been misinterpreting or overlooking some wrinkle in our policy. There should be no shame in suddenly realizing this. Geo Swan (talk) 19:38, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

• I did a little poking around, starting from Category:User essays on notability, and found:
  • Wikipedia:NBIZ
  • Wikipedia:BAHAD
  • Wikipedia:NTABLES, Wikipedia:NCLUB, Wikipedia:NFOOTYCLUB (all the same target)
  • Wikipedia:Editorials
  • Wikipedia:UNCLEG
  • Wikipedia:Notability (uglyness) (also see RFD)

-- RoySmith (talk) 20:19, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

• The distinction between USER essays and COMMUNITY essays is one of acceptance. In some cases, a USER essay is one that was presented to the community, and rejected. Blueboar (talk) 20:34, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
• I don't think the distinction between "Wikipedia essays" and "user essays" is all that helpful here. They both have no real weight, but can be surprisingly popular, so may need shortcuts for easy linking. WP: is our standard shortcut prefix (almost all other shortcuts are in the article namespace), used for links into all sorts of namespaces. WP:DISCUSS, for example, goes into the Help namespace and WP:DYKT into the Template talk namespace. That WP:THREE is a more widely accepted idea than many other essays is not caused by the existence of the redirect, but by the usefulness and simplicity of the concept. (In the past, we used to host many essays on Meta: some of the famous ones are m:DICK, m:POLE and m:GAY (the last one had its shortcut taken away at some point in the past). Essays from MeatballWiki were also commonly used, for example meatball:DefendEachOther or meatball:ForestFire). As Wikipedia is now so old, we have many essays that are outdated, lots of others that are contradicting each other or try to promote some particular point or Wikiphilosophy. Most of our essays are wrong or attack problems that are no longer important, with the exception of some timeless gems like WP:REICHSTAG or WP:VEGAN, the latter being an example of an essay that started on a userpage but was later duplicated into Wikipedia space. WP:THREE could also (of course) be moved or duplicated into Wikipedia space, but I disagree that it needs to be. The entire essay situation is a huge mess, but it is a wonderful creative mess, and I don't see rules about what types of essay deserve what classes of shortcut helping us one bit. —Kusma (t·c) 23:03, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

• I agree with what you've written here. Earlier today I was going to comment that at this point if someone feels it should be deleted the conversation needs to be taken to RFD. Not really a VPM matter. There are a mixture of opinions here, but mostly seem to be leaning towards meh. Killiondude (talk) 06:59, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Block quotations

The formatting of block quotations seems to have changed substantially. Can anyone point me to where this was discussed? 207.161.86.162 (talk) 05:44, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

You would be looking for the unilateral change at phab:T265947, which I caught a day or two ago. Please complain if you please. :) --Izno (talk) 06:56, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

“Interlanguage” help desk?

Hi,

Would anybody be able to point me to a place where I can ask technical questions that are not strictly related to the English-language edition? I contribute to a Wikipedia for a minority language, and we are way too small to have a help desk. My question is related to the use of subpages in the main namespace. I know this is normally discouraged, but I think we have a valid reason for it, and I'd like to discuss this with someone more experienced – especially to make sure we don't end up messing up Wikidata, etc. Thanks! Jean ^(t·c) 18:12, 11 November 2020 (UTC)